Dining Goes Green

Dining Services makes it a priority to implement programs and practices that are healthier for you and the environment. Creating a more environmentally friendly dining program means providing you with choices to help you minimize your impact on the environment.

Helping our Community

We take steps everyday towards a more sustainable dining program to make Carnegie Mellon greener and help the Pittsburgh community.

Our dining vendors purchase foods from local farms and vendors to help support the Pittsburgh community, provide fresher foods, and cut down on pollution due to transportation. CulinArt, our primary dining vendor, buys nearly 15 percent of their food from local vendors and serves milk from a local dairy at all of their locations. The Exchange also has local milk available for purchase.

Many of our dining locations donate their excess food to local food banks.

Good for You and the Environment

Many dining locations around campus serve organic products and hormone-free meat. By choosing to eat organic and hormone-free foods, you are helping fewer pesticides and chemicals enter the environment.

All of the chicken served at CulinArt locations is hormone and antibiotic free.

Entropy, the campus convenience store, has an entire section devoted to organic produce and foods.

Tazza D'Oro in the Gates and Hillman Centers is very committed to serving fair trade and organically grown coffee.

Food and Beyond

In 2006, the Carnegie Mellon Café located in Resnik House received a Gold LEED Certification from the U.S. Green Building Council. The café was renovated with sustainable materials and improvements were made to make the space more energy efficient. This renovation is just one step in our vision for a greener dining program.

What You Can Do

You can also do your part to decrease our environmental impact. Use the recycling bins provided at our dining locations. Only purchase food that you think you will eat to reduce food waste. Most of our dining locations use a trayless dining program, which has been found to reduce food waste on some college campuses by up to 50%. Take advantage of the organic and fair trade options at many of our dining locations to show our vendors that you support these steps towards sustainability. Together we can make Carnegie Mellon a greener campus.

Sustainable Living - helping the environment by making choices to reduce your consumption of harmful products

Fair Trade - goods that are bought at a fair price to help increase the standard of living for workers